Comments on: No-Follow SEO Debate

By: Paul R

Paul R — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:41:36 +0000

I gotta take Google’s side in this. it’s their website/search engine and they can do whatever they want. they are only accountable to the searchers and their shareholders.

By: Crystal

Crystal — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:44:15 +0000

@Forrest – Completely agreed. The frustrating thing is that until we have a firm grasp on what Google decides to do (meaning never), we are almost at a loss. It is definitely going to change the way SEO’s work.

@Phil, It is the same as advertising, in my opinion as well. The web is all about reaching your community and with social growing at such a rapid pace, pretty soon PR and SERPs are going to take a backseat. What will matter is content being delivered to RSS feeders and social interaction. The way we define “advertising” is already starting to change. It is going to be interesting to see the web change over the next few years.

@Nelson, I do understand that they make great products and have positioned themselves as a company with a lot to offer. However, I think with all of that power comes a lot of responsibility to your users. Right now, Google is not being completely upfront with consumers about the way they do business and in the end, it will come back to bite them. How can they expect us to live by their code when 1) they don’t make it explicit and 2) they don’t live by it themselves.

By: Nelson

Nelson — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:47:07 +0000

Even though I’m new at this I can totally see how this will not be beneficial for LST and what we do but at the same time they are a corporation that have slowly managed to become the #1 search engine worldwide by doing minimum promotion and being the quiet kid in the back of the class, and now that they have achieved what they have can we really blame them for taking advantage of what we all have put in their hands? If you think about it no one owns the internet, so its just a matter of time until someone with enough power took charge and began to take advantage of the most powerful resource mankind has created…

By: Philip Wong

Philip Wong — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:32:52 +0000

I have a real problem with Google trying to police the internet lately. They’re not the only search engine, yet they enforce their guidelines to “benefit” the online community. They are only thinking of themselves and the money they’re missing out on. Why demote certain sites that pass PageRank from paid services? This is just like any other form of advertisement, a company paying for reach and frequency. Is this much different than Google Adwords, Adsense, and their other revenue generating services? We all want to please Google, but it’s not right for them to threaten everyone when they can’t always tell a paid link from an organic one.

By: Forrest

Forrest — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:18:44 +0000

This whole “no-follow” paradigm is certainly changing link building strategies across the web. I agree with you that penalizing sites for “potential” paid links is ludicrous, as I am sure many sites have been wrongly accused and penalized for such links.

I am interested to see what they decide to do with the tiny URL (I voted “Yes” along with 75% of other people)!